


Lovely, Dark, and Deep

by Puddingish



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, Oh and uh, Sexuality Crisis, Suicide Attempt, a lot of that, garrus keepin it real, lot of general war related triggery stuff, low key synthesis ending but its not really important, this is just kinda a giant hellish ramble lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 04:44:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7208216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Puddingish/pseuds/Puddingish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whether in the heat of battle or amidst the calming hum of the main battery, Garrus has far too much time to think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lovely, Dark, and Deep

**Author's Note:**

> To my otherwise wonderful english teacher for making me read a bunch of shitty war novels that were all black and white bullshit hero stories that prompted me to write this out of spite.  
> And to AJ.  
> 

There were certain aspects of war that no amount of C Sec training could have ever prepared him for.  
In C sec, he saw a lot of ugly things; slavers, drug dealers, murderers, even the occasional serial killer. It made him absolutely sick. People he knew of only through mugshots and abstract anger, a place to focus his frustration at the fucked up way of the world that as much as he tried, he could never seem to understand. But what really hurts is the bad guys on your side. The ones you laugh with, the ones who’ve been through hell and back with together.  
The war on Saren brought out some bad things in Garrus’ good friends.  
But god, did the war against the Reapers bring out worse.

Shepard, who always turned the other cheek, always strove for the most peaceful solution even at the cost of his own safety, was not that way in battle. Shepard stomped heads in with his boot, he fried people alive, Garrus once watched him rip a man’s throat out with his teeth when stripped of weapons. When there’s a gun pointed at your head, you’ll do anything. Garrus wished he could say he was any better but he couldn’t even lie to himself. But it was sad all the same to see his quiet, tiny Commander who was so loving and kind brutally killing without a second thought. Now that was just how it was.

* * *

 

Garrus was quick to discover many new things about warfare. Being in a gunfight isn’t about skill. Sure, if you know how to shoot, your odds go up. But most the time it’s just a matter of luck. And Garrus swears Shepard’s gotta be the luckiest man in the galaxy. When facing swarms of husks, banshees, and brutes, you’re gonna end up cornered at some point. Then skill doesn’t matter. When you’re out of ammo, beaten and surrounded, every protocol, every tactic you’ve learned flies right straight out of your mind and it all comes down to two things: luck and instinct. And if you’re down on one or the other, you’re fucked.  
He has never seen the commander fucked. The man was near invincible, a nonstop driving force like a brewing storm. He thrived off of those moments, fighting even harder as the odds stacked higher against him. It was his drug. But once the battle was finished and the dust settled, he looked at the carnage around him and came down hard. Then the humbleness, the awkwardness, the quietness was back, and he was the same old Shepard Garrus would see back on the ship. The same old Shepard whose shoulders sagged with guilt, who walked with an uneven gait from the time he got a knife jammed through his knee from a blue suns merc that hit him just right, just _wrong_ , who had deep jagged scars tracing every square inch of sunburnt skin. Not a soldier, just a small, sad man who’d seen too much.

* * *

 

Garrus thinks a lot about Thane. He thinks about the fact that he’s dying and that he lost his wife and that all he’s done his entire life is kill people. While death has left its mark on everyone's life in one way or another, especially since the start of the reaper attacks, it seems to have composed Thane’s entirely; a tragedy penned in spattered scarlet. It wasn’t fair but then again when was anything?  
He thinks of Thane’s perfect memory and wonders if recalling his wife’s loving eyes and son’s tender smile in absolute clarity is worth being able to close his eyes and see every wound inflicted wife’s cold bloodied corpse and the shrill pitch of his son’s screams as his father walked away from everything left that put his barely beating heart at risk.  
As he walks past Thane in the mess hall one evening, seeing the drell’s back against the wall, eyes darting nervously around the room, observing everyone around him and expecting the worst at any moment, Garrus makes up his mind. In an instant, he would trade all the best memories he’d ever had to forget half the things he’d seen in the reaper war. There were enough ghosts haunting the Normandy’s halls.

* * *

 

 

Whenever he could help it, Shepard had always worn really short really tight shorts. They’d all laughed about it at first but now it was just such a common occurrence, it was strange to see him in pants. He gives some bullshit excuse like they’re ‘less restrictive’ but anyone with eyes can see he’s got fantastic legs and is just a fucking show off.  
Another of Shepard’s constants is alcohol, he drinks it like most the other humans drink water. On good days, wine, and on bad, rum. The more time goes on, the less he sees Shepard without a glass in hand.  
After the suicide mission, he isn’t sober for a week.  
Garrus comes to check in on him a couple of times and his Commander tells him stories about the crew members that died on the collector ship, stories about Ash and Jenkins, and one about Kaidan that just makes him drink more. The living weigh on him just as much as the dead sometimes. Kaidan, even more. So he drinks and he drinks until he’s drowning in a sea of blurred memories and unspoken words. Then he keeps drinking.

* * *

 

As soon as he’d caught wind of Shepard’s death, Garrus quit C-Sec and headed to Omega. He assembled a team. Butler, tactician, Reaver, heavy weapons, Nan, biotics, Red, soldier, Zor, berserker, Ace, tech expert, Tsungen, explosives expert, Carver, medic, and Sidonis, his right hand man. He knew their names, their backgrounds, their stories. He was so close with them, family wouldn’t even be strong enough to describe it. He could picture every one of them alive and next to him with perfect clarity. And quite often, he did.  
They came to him, whether awake or asleep, smiling and laughing and arguing with each other.

 _Zor came stomping in the room, Nan slung over one shoulder, drooling. Behind him, Ace dragged across the ground, out cold; Zor pulling him by the good leg. He dropped them on the living room floor in front him, scattering the cards of the poker game he’d been engaged in with Red and Sidonis. They all looked to him in silent question._  
_“Nan outdrank Ace and then dared him to drink ryncol to prove himself. He did and passed out and she was laughing so hard she couldn’t walk and fell asleep while I carried her back.”_  
_He sighed. “Are they okay?”_  
_“They won’t be tomorrow. Those little shits are gonna have one hell of a hangover.”_

Garrus blinked and they’d vanished, the fond memory replaced with the cold metal walls of the main battery. Without effort, he could still hear the frantic tap of Tsungen’s foot, see the soft amber of Red’s long hair, imagine the crease of Zor’s parental frowns as Ace and Reaver beat each other bloody. They were awful, intolerable, infuriating, and so very much his.  
And they wouldn’t leave him alone. Although there were the frequent fond memories, what happened more often were the nightmares.

 _Garrus couldn’t breathe. There were bodies everywhere, blood spattered all over the walls, the floor, staining everything in crimson gore. His men, where were his men?_  
_Butler, one shot to the head, two shots to the leg, laying on his side with most his face blown off, barely recognizable. Nine._  
_Nan, on her stomach, fried by a fireball. Eight._  
_Red, reaching for her but not close enough to touch. A giant chunk of her left shoulder and her left arm, gone. Seven._  
_Zor, flat on his back, dagger still stuck in his slashed open throat. Six._  
_Carver, slumped against the wall, hands behind her back, chest peppered with bullets. Five._  
_Reaver, machine gun in each hand, surrounded by body after body. A rocket wound marred much of his lower half, burned and thoroughly bloodied. Four._  
_Ace, repeated shots to the stomach. Three._  
_Tsungen curled around him, hands trembling violently, not a scratch on him. He looked Garrus in the eyes, raised his lover’s pistol to his temple, and fired a single shot. Two._  
_Sidonis, glancing back to meet his gaze, eyes wet and pleading as Garrus granted him what was more a mercy than a punishment._

Nine down, one to go.

* * *

 

Jack had a lot to say. Most of it wasn’t good, and nobody usually listened, but she talked anyway. She talked about the gangs she used to run with, missions she’s been on, her sex life, hell, she could spend an entire hour complaining about the weather. At first it was grating, but when they were marching through mud and blood and shit, Garrus found the most unbearable thing was silence. So he asked her questions and she’d answer and if he asked too many she’d laugh and call him a snoopy little fucker and start talking about something else. Sometimes, she’d sing in a sweet alto voice that made him feel warm and giddy. But mostly, she just talked.  
The only thing Jack loved more than talking was killing. When she had the opportunity, she drew everything out. She’d shoot just to the side of an instantly fatal blow and watch the life drain from their body with an expression that Garrus could only compare to that of a child who knew they’d done something so wrong they wanted their parents to scold them. But she couldn’t help herself and no one bothered to tell her not to. Garrus stopped watching after a while.

Every week, Shepard sat with her in engineering and shaved her head with a tenderness and care that his rough, battle scarred hands rarely held. She’d hum softly and he’d lean his face into the crook of her neck once he was done and close his eyes. They had the sort of closeness that didn’t need words, like they had both lived through so much pain and suffering that the silence of understanding granted cool relief.

Shepard fucked Jack a few times. Kelly Chambers and Miranda too. Once he fucked Ashley but now she’s dead and he can’t really look at Kaidan anymore. He seemed to bed a new woman in half the space ports they’d gone to and Garrus started to become rather impressed.  
He brought it up in passing to Tali once, who said it was a “bullshit overcompensation”. Confused, he pressed for her to elaborate but she just scoffed “ _men_ ” under her breath and shooed him out.

It took him four months to figure out what Tali meant. In the lower levels of Afterlife, he catches Shepard grinding against a tall batarian man, passion and heat in his eyes that Garrus had never seen before. He laughs and whispers something in the other’s ear, who grins at him and Garrus leaves, feeling like he’s intruding on something he’s not meant to.  
The first time he asks Shepard about it, he snorts. “I’m not interested in men. I was drunk, nothing happened, it was just dancing. You gotta cut loose more, man, jesus.” Garrus laughs it off and the topic shifts to something easier.

Liara brings it up next. “It appears you’re very comfortable having Thane watch your back.” She says with a smile that suggests more from her words.  
Shepard gives her a flat glance. “He’s an excellent soldier.”  
“Of course.”

* * *

 

It rained ash on Palavan. Grey rose from the ground and fell from the sky and coated everything in a layer of thick dust. It filled his mouth, burned his eyes and throat, settled so deep into the cracks in his plating that even years later he could still swear he hadn’t scrubbed it all away. It was crushing, the weight of so many lives, so many deaths. He took it in stride, his shoulders had borne weight many times before, and frankly, they were getting numb to it.

* * *

 

Shepard fell in love with Mordin, that wasn’t hard to see. Everyone knew it, Mordin included, but no one ever had the balls to bring it up. No matter how much he pined, his feelings would never be returned, everyone knew that too, so it was swept under the rug.  
When Mordin went to distribute the genophage cure on Tchunga, running off into an exploding tower with a sad smile goodbye, Shepard broke. Garrus had to pick him up and hold him so he wouldn’t follow and the commander hurled punches at everything in his reach, Garrus first, then himself, then, once he watched the building go up in flames, he went limp.  
What nobody prepares you for with war is not only losing someone, but watching everyone around you lose everything too.  
With bleeding hands, Shepard had grabbed his gun, aiming it at his temple, eyes glazed and empty. Garrus wish he could say he had moved. He wished he had run to his best friend’s side, knocking the weapon from his hand and pulling him into an embrace and assuring everything would be okay. But he froze. All he could do was stare, at the burnt down tower, at the surrounding rubble and piles of dead, at his bloodstained hands, and at his superior officer, standing amidst the landscape of hell itself, and do absolutely nothing. Shepard’s hand shook so much he dropped the gun and he fell to his knees, making a low keening sound, too overwhelmed by grief to even cry.  
For a moment, Garrus found himself wishing he hadn’t held Shepard back so he didn’t have to watch the man the entire galaxy was depending on crumple to nothing.  
“I loved him.” Shepard sobbed.  
Garrus helped him up. “I know.” He grabbed the discarded gun and placed it in the commander's hands. His eyes drifted to the sky. It was getting dark.  
“I don’t wanna go back there. I don’t wanna go anywhere ever again.”  
“I know.”  
They headed back for the trucks without another word.

Sidonis criticized him the whole ride back. “Why didn’t you do anything? He’s your friend, you should have helped him!” He said. “Why did you just stand there?”  
“I don’t know.” Rested on Garrus’ tongue.  
“You’re pathetic.” He spat, mandibles flaring in disdain. But Sidonis was dead and he didn’t matter so Garrus put him out of mind.

“Where’s the salarian?” Wrex asked them.  
Shepard stared out the window of the truck. Though the sun wouldn’t set for many hours, the sky was thick and clouded with smoke. The charred remains of the tower still burned and the reaper’s corpse glowed eerily, making red dance across the rocky ground.  
“Is Mordin alright?” Eve said.  
The krogan danced and roared and cried out in overwhelming relief and joy. They butted heads and raised fists and rejoiced in a celebration that could be heard planet wide. The ground shook and ash rose from the dust, joining with the warm stale air.  
“Shepard.” Garrus whispered. “Come on.”  
The reek of burnt metal filled his nostrils. Burnt flesh.  
“Commander.”  
Mordin was always moving, pacing, talking to himself, rapidly tapping his pen against his lip, it didn’t matter what he was doing as long as he wasn’t standing still. His eyes were squinted, mouth thin and set so often in a wide, encouraging smile. The skin of his hands was rough and calloused from hard work. Mordin was always working on something, and it was always something he felt very strong moral ties to. Something he would give his life for.  
“Shepard, I know this is hard for you.”  
The glare of the fluorescent lights was blinding.  
“Please, sir, just give me something here.”  
Mordin looked at Shepard as he stepped into the elevator. He smiled. Shepard wanted to run to him, drag him from the danger and death that awaited and keep him safe, love him, hold him. Instead, he gave a small salute and several hot, fat, tears dripping down his cheeks.  
“You can’t stay here forever.”  
Today was a tuesday. Shepard supposed he didn’t much like tuesdays anymore.  
“Please talk to me.”  
Mordin walked back and forth across the length of the truck, muttering softly. He didn’t look at Shepard. His feet were on fire.  
“Just say something.”  
Shepard slowly traced the scars across Mordin’s cheek with his gaze. Weren’t they a bit further right?  
“Anything.”  
The eyes were wrong too, too wide.  
“Please.”  
This wasn’t Mordin, no, of course not.  
Mordin was dead.

“Pathetic.” Sidonis hissed again.

* * *

 

Eve names her first child Mordin. Shepard won’t hold the babe, won’t even look at her, and Wrex lets him run away, giving him an embrace heavy with understanding. On the shuttle back to the Normandy, Shepard shakes, mumbles, violently wretches up bile into a sick bucket they keep handy for the new recruits. Kaidan sits next to him, rubbing his back, and Garrus stares straight ahead, wishing he was anywhere else, anywhere where he didn’t have to see the part of war he was the worst at dealing with. Not the fighting, not even the death: the aftermath.

Shepard goes to Omega the next morning and fucks an asari he picks up in some dumpy bar.  
“I’m not gay.” He says to Garrus the next day.  
“Yeah.” Garrus says.

* * *

 

It’s Zaeed who brings it up last, after Mordin’s funeral, cigarette dangling from his lip. “You’ve got a look, kid. S’rough. There’s a goddamn shortage of people that’ll make you feel like he did but maybe you’ll get lucky.” Ash falls off the tip when his mouth moves, smoke drifting from his nose in thin, foggy wisps.  
“Maybe.” Shepard doesn’t look sure of it at all.

* * *

 

Thane dies on a tuesday. Garrus knew it would hurt but still he wishes he’d spent even more time on the Normandy in solitude so he could look Shepard in the eyes when he left the hospital room and one of them hadn’t cried. Someone had to be strong. But god, it was so hard, impossibly hard. Shepard’s expression says he doesn’t want Garrus to say anything. So he doesn’t.  
They leave the citadel without further exchange.

When Garrus next went to Shepard’s quarters, he was sitting cross legged on the floor in those stupid tiny little shorts, hunched forward with his nose in a book, reading softly under his breath. Garrus paused.  
“Kalahira, mistress of inscrutable depths, I ask forgiveness.” He murmured.  
“Shepard?”  
The commander jumped. “Shit, Garrus, I didn’t see you.”  
“You okay?”  
“I will be.” He said. “I have to be.”

* * *

 

After Thessia falls, everything’s different. Liara’s bad. Garrus stands outside her door, searching for words he can say to help. But what can you say to someone that’s lost an entire planet? He turns around and returns to the main battery. _Coward_ , he thinks to himself, _you’re a goddamn coward_. But he can only see so many people break before he breaks too. Guns are easier. The numbers offer the cold comfort of a silent distraction. _Coward_ , he thinks again.  
“Coward.” Sidonis echoes.

* * *

 

The Commander spent three days on the Citadel. Three days are a lot when you’re at a galaxy scale war but no one argued. Everyone was tired. He didn’t even come back on his own. Jack of all people showed up, Shepard thrown over her shoulder, shirtless and reeking of alcohol and sex. His neck and chest were bruised with little love bites, lips parted faintly, his breathing slow and heavy.  
“Our Commander made some new friends and drank until he passed out. Twice. Think he’s bad off this time though.”  
“Where’s his shirt?” Kaidan asked, blushing deep red.  
“I couldn’t find it. These aren’t his pants, I couldn’t find those either.” She handed him to Garrus. “You’re lucky he has anything on at all. I’m going back to that bar, he’s your problem.” Jack paused at the doorway. “Tell him to call me once he wakes up.”

When he woke up in the med bay the next morning, Garrus was sitting at his bed side.  
“Garrus?”  
“Mmm?”  
“Thessia’s gone.”  
“Yeah. It’s not right. We’ve lost so much.”  
“How can I be enough?”  
Garrus blinked in surprise. “What?”  
“You know that phrase, ‘weight of the world on my shoulders’? Well, fuck, I’d love the weight of just one. Everyone in the galaxy is looking at me and I’m just not enough.”  
“You don’t have to be.”  
Shepard was quiet after that. “Hey Garrus?”  
“Yeah?”  
“You don’t hate me, right?”  
“No Shepard, I don’t hate you, you’re–” _my best friend, my brother, I’ve never been as close to anyone as you_ , “I don’t hate you.”  
“...I don’t like women.”  
“I’ve known that for a while.”  
“Yeah. I know. I just felt like I had to say it.”  
“Mordin...?” Garrus couldn’t find a phrase that sounded alright but he got the point.  
“He didn’t love me back. It’s okay. But God did I–” he broke off with a choking sound, rubbing at his mouth. “Fuck. I loved him as a friend too, I would take anything he offered I don’t care, I just wanted _him_ , the details didn’t matter too much. When I was around him I just felt so… Home.”  
“I’m sorry.”  
“Me too.”

* * *

 

But the commander had a way about him, something compelling that drove others to follow, to succeed. And, despite all his losses, his seemingly constant streak of luck continued, this time in the form of a skinny canadian, with rich brown skin and grey streaking through the gelled back curls of his hair.  
They would kiss all the time, before they left for missions, before a fight, after a fight, they never stopped touching each other. Shepard wasn’t happier necessarily, he hadn’t been happy in years, but lighter.  
They were afraid to leave each other. Shepard was always armed now, even in the Normandy, as he slept, as he ate. And not just with a little pistol. He brought all the weapons he could carry everywhere. And he watched Kaidan like a hawk.  
He couldn’t survive another Mordin.

* * *

 

The last battle was the hardest. That seemed like it should have been more obvious than it was. It was just, they’d fought everything at this point, hell, they'd taken down a reaper on foot! Shouldn’t it ever get easier? But the beasts were relentless, marauders, banshees, and husks at every turn, cruel reminders of what the reapers had in store for them should they fail.  
But Shepard was ruthless. No, not Shepard. He was gone now, replaced with a weapon. He didn’t even pause to bark orders, just slashing and ripping through everything in his path without acknowledging anything else. For the first time, the team, the civilians, everyone and everything around him didn’t matter.  
Although it was three hours later that Shepard’s death was official, in Garrus’ eyes, he was dead the second he set foot back on earth. He forfeited being a man and became the mission.

When they reached the final stretch. Shepard went with Anderson, told Garrus and Kaidan to go back and meet him at the ship. Garrus looked into his eyes, wild and desperate, and knew what he was really asking. He gave a nod. The needs of the many, he told himself.

Kaidan screamed. He screamed when Garrus carried him away from what they both knew would be Shepard’s last fight, he screamed when they found out Shepard had sacrificed himself for everyone else. Sometimes, in the months that followed he would be in the middle of doing something completely normal and he would drop to the ground, covering his ears and just screaming until someone came to help. He woke up in the mornings, drenched in sweat, throat raw, shaking and confused. He wasn’t allowed to be left alone. It wasn’t like he noticed when you were in the room anyway, so it didn’t much matter. They all got used to his episodes and dealt with them with a sort of well practiced grace because he was one of the few people left that understood. So Kaidan screamed and screamed and everyone let him.  
Jack, of all people, latched onto Kaidan, making sure he ate and slept and showered. She talked a lot less now. Garrus missed it. He wanted to ask her questions but it didn’t seem right anymore and he didn’t have any anyway.

Kaidan came back to himself two months later. Garrus sometimes wished he didn’t. The screaming and comatose periods lessened but then the crying started. He spoke sometimes but it was never anything anyone wanted to hear.  
He’d stalk the halls of the Normandy slowly, gazing upon the crew with wide, watery eyes. He made sure to ask everyone their name, job, family, all the details of their lives until he could remember. “Someone has to.” He’d say. “I wish I’d known this this of all those who’d served. Who no longer serve.” He’d say.

* * *

 

Garrus got medals. From C-Sec, from the council, from half the goddamn galaxy it seemed. It seemed that was the only way they could find to say thanks. Medal after fucking medal.  
His dad loved them.  
Once Shepard was dead for good, he tracked his dad down, hoping for someone that would understand, in any way at all what he’d gone through.  
But all his dad would talk about were the goddamn medals.  
“I don’t feel like I’ve done anything right.” Garrus would say.  
“You’re being hailed as a hero!” His dad would say.  
“I don’t feel like one.”  
“But son,” he repeated over and over as if it was worth watching so many friends and family and _Shepard_ die, “You’ve been recognized by every citadel race! They’ve thrown you ceremonies, given you medals, what more proof do you need?”  
Proof didn’t undo the carnage of war. It just made himself and everyone else more aware of it.

* * *

 

The world mourned Shepard, many as a concept and many more as a man. He had touched more people than Garrus could keep track of, and everyone paid a small tribute of some kind. They tried to hold a service for the Normandy crew and no one really wanted it but Kaidan easily had the hardest time. Halfway through the ceremony he snapped.  
“I don’t deserve this!” He screamed. “Look at us, we’re not heroes, we’re killers! You’re congratulating us on killing!” Liara was crying too but she grabbed onto him and held on. “I’ve taken thousands, maybe tens of thousands of lives. I don’t deserve a medal. I deserve a dishonorable discharge and a fucking bullet through my skull.” He continued, despite Liara’s attempts to calm him and only stopped when he was so panicked he couldn’t breathe.  
“You did what needed to be done.” Someone murmured and Liara snarled.  
“You have no idea what needed to be done.” She said softly. “And you never will.”  
The ceremony was even worse after that. _Needs of the many” my ass, look what you’ve done to us!_ Garrus cursed silently. _What do we have left?_

* * *

 

The hardest thing about war is when peace settles in and you realize how much you got used to having thirty pounds of sniper rifle in your hands and a man with a machine gun at your six, cracking jokes as bullets whizzed by you. Your hands feel empty. You feel ghosts lingering a pace behind you everywhere you go, always watching, always protecting.  
You spend the entire time you’re fighting praying for an end and when it comes, you realize you have nothing anymore. Garrus shouldn’t miss the constant fighting for his life, the difficult, spur of the moment decision making, the crushing pressure every second held because every step could result in your death. He wished he could say he was happy with peace, he thought he would be, knows he _should_ be.

“Well,” Garrus murmured, “Shows what I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> The woods are lovely, dark, and deep  
> But I have promises to keep,  
> And miles to go before I sleep,  
> And miles to go before I sleep.


End file.
